So it can be spread human to human. That’s been kind of denied until now, and as recently as on tonight’s media news.
China alerted WHO on Dec31 about what is now called n-COV. The first confirmed case outside China was 13 January, and soon after that there was a suspicion of H-H transmission beause none of the international cases were near the live wild animal markets.
Initially thought to be animal to human contact - live animal markets were the first suspected ground zero but within weeks China has said H-H transmission is occurring.
bear in mind this is all occuring very fast and the timeline is a bit compressed. This has been going for less than a month but may have been occuring for several weeks before that until the Health authorities noted a jump in respiratory disease in a large city.
SARS-COV and MER-COV were both from bats
Initially n-COV also though to be from bats as similar genetic sequence found but with later studies thought to have originated from Snakes. But complication is snakes hunt bats so it is also likely bat gave it to snakes as the intermediate host and then snakes to humans. How snakes gave it to humans was probably at the time of slaughter. The wild animal market sold snakes and bats. In the Middle East the MER-COV intermediate host was camel and Civets
Snakes are cold blooded and bats warm blooded. That the virus could adapt meant a certain level of mutation and then from snakes to humans. WHO is reporting that the virus is mutating rapidly making it difficult to get a workable vaccine going.
Much is know already about the virus - there is evidence that the virus is a combined version of a bat COV and maybe a snake COV. The entire genetic sequence is already known since January 12 when China posted it but for the mutations. Mutations can also be bad for an organism. If an organism is perfectly adapted to its environment it is better to have zero mutations.
This virus like many viruses have a spike which helps it attach to and inject its DNA into the host cell.
The take home message for China is to reduce of consumption of wild animals. But the Chinese have demonstrated a sophisticated scientific, virology and public health expertise.
n-COV now called 2019-nCOV
New word for AFF members:
Zoonosis: a disease that be spread from animals to humans.